Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One (26 page)

It wasn’t a great moment in Obama’s presidency, but he was certainly right about one thing: there is a long history of blacks being stopped by the police for no good reason. Limbaugh thought that the remark, coming from the country’s chief law-enforcement officer, was extreme and inappropriate, a sign of what he saw as Obama’s basic disaffection with the country he had been elected to lead. In an interview with Greta Van Susteren on FOX News, he said, “Let’s face it. President Obama is black, and I think he’s got a chip on his shoulder.”

Rush and I were both raised at a time of racial optimism and naïveté, when the goal of decent white people was an integrated society. We were taught that skin color shouldn’t matter, that we were all basically the same, that we should judge others not by their color but the content of their character. And if we didn’t achieve this in practice, or even try very hard—and most of us didn’t—it was, at least, the ideal that decent people subscribed to.

But things changed. Malcolm X introduced a compelling analysis of the black condition in America that included a historical counternarrative leading to a doctrine of racial nationalism and separatism. In one of his most famous metaphors, he compared black integrationists like Martin Luther King to “house Negroes” who loved the slave master more than the master loved himself. The black masses, he said, were “field Negroes” who caught hell every day and hated white people. “When the master’s house caught on fire, the field Negro prayed for a wind, for a breeze. When the master got sick, the field Negro prayed that he died . . . He was intelligent.” The militancy of Malcolm X begat the Black Power movement (just as Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois begat Malcolm) and encouraged African American intellectuals to see themselves not as Americans but as people of color whose interests and sympathies were properly aligned with the (anti-American) Third World.

White America was baffled by this. At the very moment the United States was passing landmark civil rights, black people (still known in polite circles as “Negroes”) were rioting in the streets and kicking well-meaning whites out of the civil rights movement. How could that be? Then Dr. King was murdered, more rioting followed, and more white reaction. Efforts to integrate schools by enforced bussing were violently opposed in Northern Democratic cities like Boston and my own home town of Pontiac, Michigan. The Republican Party capitalized on white fear and disaffection with the “southern strategy” that brought Richard Nixon to office. Blacks left the Republican Party en masse and became a permanent wing of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the American intelligentsia stopped talking in terms of an integrationist, national melting pot and adopted a tribal model, in which righteously disaffected minorities (blacks, women, gays, Hispanics, and Native Americans) made group identity the basis for their politics.

While all this was going on, Rush Limbaugh was in the studio spinning oldies or selling tickets for the Kansas City Royals. When he emerged, blinking, into the harsh light of political combat in the mid-1980s, he came armed with the belief in color-blindness that had been in vogue twenty years earlier. Mort Sahl once said that anyone who maintains a consistent position in America will eventually be tried for treason. Or racism.

Race was on Limbaugh’s mind when I went down to Palm Beach to see him in the summer of 2009. By then we had spent hours together talking and exchanged more than a hundred e-mail messages; and, of course, I had listened to his show almost daily for several years. I had a pretty good idea of what he did and didn’t think on a range of matters. Including race. I told him that I thought he had a blind spot on the subject.

Limbaugh asked me what I meant by a blind spot, and I mentioned his unwillingness to see why American blacks didn’t share his narrative of America as a uniquely virtuous nation.

“The Constitution defined Negroes as property. They counted as three-fifths of a human for the purpose of the census. You can see why that might be a problem,” I said.

“The Framers had to accommodate slave states,” Limbaugh said. “Those were the actual politics of the situation. And the Constitution set up a process to gradually end slavery. That stuff legally has been washed away and dealt with.”

“Sure, but a lot of the early founders were slaveholders. Washington, Jefferson. Imagine how a black kid feels going to a school named after a man who owned slaves.”

Limbaugh was incredulous. “The founding fathers were not oppressors,” he said. “And at some point, you have to let go. We fought a war. And we’ve done what we can to level the playing field.”

“So, you don’t feel guilty?”

“No, not in perpetuity. That keeps the races divided. I plant myself firmly in reality. I want everyone to experience the greatness of this country. And they can. We have a black president now. We have Oprah. I’m bullish on America as it exists today. Negative people make other people sick. Stop thinking of yourself as a hyphenated American. We all have obstacles. I have, because of my size and my opinions. But I believe in individuals, everyone succeeding. I have never kept anyone back or subjugated anyone.”

The following day I got to the studio early and dropped in on James Golden. He was sitting in his office going over some mail, but he didn’t mind being interrupted. Since our first Huey Newton meets the Mainstream Media moment, we had developed an easy connection. We’re about the same age, like the same kind of music, and have some experiences in common. And I admired Golden for his willingness to stand up for his views. “After you’ve been called an Uncle Tom for the two millionth time, it loses its meaning,” he told me. “I’m a conservative, okay? That’s how I see the world. My mother is part of the Democrat machine in New York—she couldn’t understand how I could be a conservative, but I am one. And I was one before I went to work for Rush. I was already in the radio business in New York, and I saw a lot of so-called liberals who were real racists. And I can tell you, Rush isn’t.”

Golden has been screening Limbaugh’s calls and acting as his alter ego going back to the start of the national show. “When he came to ABC in 1988, the in-joke was that AM radio was going to be Muzak at the Hilton Hotels. Howard Stern was on FM. Imus was on WNBC, but he wasn’t even syndicated. Everybody ABC tried, all the big DJs from around the country, bombed. I wasn’t happy at ABC and I quit, which is when Rush hired me for his show. He had no idea what my politics were and he never asked.”

One day, early on, Limbaugh walked into the studio and found Golden in tears. He was broke and couldn’t pay his bills. The next day, Limbaugh handed him an envelope with five thousand dollars in it. “Rush wasn’t rich then,” says Golden. “Five thousand was a lot of money to him. He told me, ‘This is a gift, not a loan,’ and didn’t mention it again. At that moment I decided, anything I can do for the guy, I’m in. I hear people call him every name in the book, especially on race. They have no fucking clue who this man is.”

Golden is a voracious reader of history, and we were chatting about World War I when Limbaugh walked into the room. “James,” he said, “I want to ask you a question. We were talking yesterday and, let me put it this way, would it ever bother you to go to a school named George Washington or Thomas Jefferson because they were slave owners?”

Golden laughed. “Well, I can tell you that when I was in school, I was the one who stood up in English class and gave a speech about why the Black Panthers are needed.”

Limbaugh look befuddled. “But James, you’re a conservative,” he said.

“That’s right, I am.”

“You’re an American patriot.”

Golden nodded. “I am. Absolutely. But I don’t celebrate the Fourth of July—that’s not my Independence Day. That’s white people’s Independence Day.” Something clicked, and I remembered Golden, as Bo Snerdley, riffing on how Michelle Obama was “frontin’ ” in her speech at the Democratic National Convention when she didn’t tell the nation that blacks don’t consider the Fourth of July to be their Independence Day. Evidently Limbaugh hadn’t been listening, or maybe he thought Golden was just kidding. Now he seemed shocked to discover that Bo Snerdley, the Official Obama Criticizer, Rush’s sidekick for two decades, a conservative in the very best kind of standing, didn’t celebrate the nation’s birthday. Limbaugh has an expressive face, and I could see him turning the matter over in his mind.

Our talk about race obviously made an impression. A few weeks later Rush brought it up on the air. “There’s a guy writing a book about me and the last time I sat down and did an interview with him, it was down here in Florida, and he said, ‘I don’t think you get it about race.’ ” Limbaugh described our conversation about the Constitution and slavery and his own experiences. “I told him some stories about growing up,” he said. “I told him about our maid that came in two or three times a week named Alberta. We called her Bertie. She was like a grandmother to my brother and me, and my mom and dad. My mother took her home and I’d drive in the car. I’m six or seven years old. I saw where Bertie lived and it made me sick. I talked to my parents about it. I said, ‘Why does this happen?’ They sat me down and they talked to me about the circumstances. It was my father that enabled Bertie to buy a house outside of that neighborhood and get her a job at . . . I think it was at Woolworth’s. I’m telling this author all this stuff and I don’t know if it’s registering at all—and I’m, frankly, angry I have to tell it. I’m angry that I have to say this stuff. Here’s a guy doing a book on me who I don’t know if he thinks [I’m a racist] or if he’s just asking the question because he thinks readers are going to want to know it.”

 

 

 

It was cringe inducing to hear Limbaugh defend his lack of bias by mentioning his housekeeper. Sophisticated people don’t say such things. Race talk in America is carried out in euphemism and politically correct code, a point Attorney General Eric Holder had made earlier that year when he said that Americans are cowards when it comes to candidly discussing race. Limbaugh has been conducting that sort of conversation, from the perspective of a traditional white integrationist. He regards black nationalism and black liberation theology as separatist, opposes affirmative action as a racial quota system, and sees multiculturalism as an effort to undermine a national American identity. These views are conservative, but they are not racist, and he sees the accusation that he is a racist as a form of liberal Kryptonite. “I didn’t become a racist until somebody called me one when I started this radio show,” he said. “I wasn’t a racist up until 1988, and then somebody called me one—and ever since I was called a racist, I’ve been one, according to the media. And yet I never was one and I’m not one now.” But Limbaugh is not quite as innocent as he sounds. He has known from the start that mocking Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson as racial shakedown artists (“the Justice Brothers”) or calling the NAACP a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party were not likely to make him a beloved figure in the black community. And he certainly knew that bits like “The Magic Negro” parody would be interpreted by his enemies as racist. Joe Biden could get away with marveling, during the 2008 primary campaign, that Barack Obama was “clean” and “articulate”; Senator Robert Byrd could muse publicly about “white niggers” without losing his honored place in the Democratic Party. Their reputation as liberals entitled them to racial get-out-of-jail-free cards. Limbaugh didn’t have one of those. He didn’t know it yet, but he would need one.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

F
rom his early boyhood, Rusty Limbaugh has been sports crazy. Baseball was his first love, but his experience with the Kansas City Royals cooled his ardor. Besides, in Pittsburgh, in the 1970s, he fell for the “the greatest team of all time,” the Steelers. Football back then was the sport of Republicans. The anti-war left despised the NFL, with its long bombs and ground attacks and martial values. Richard Nixon, a frustrated college player, diagrammed plays in the Oval Office and sent them over to the coaching staff of the Washington Redskins. His successor, Gerald Ford, had been a football star at the University of Michigan, good enough to have received contract offers from the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers (which he turned down). Ronald Reagan, another college player, starred in a biopic about Notre Dame football hero George Gipp and, in the White House, sometimes channeled the character.

Limbaugh was no Gipper. After his sophomore years on the Central High team, the closest he came to playing was in touch games organized by George Brett in Kansas City. But Limbaugh loved pro football, and as his fame and wealth grew, he was able to attend games all over the country, sit in owners’ boxes, chat with coaches and players, and discuss intricacies with analysts. Monday through Friday he devoted himself to the political area, but he had weekends off, and the thought of spending them combining his two loves, broadcasting and football, appealed to him. In 2000 he discussed the possibility of joining ABC’s
Monday Night Football
media team, but nothing came of it.